Chapter 5 #2
There’ve been more emails from them. Well, my mother. My father hasn’t said a word. All the emails say similar things. Pierre is worried sick. He’s sorry for his part in all this, but you’ve made things so difficult for him.
I typed a response.
Imagine how difficult things would be for him if he’d succeeded in killing me.
I didn’t send it. There’s no point. A line was drawn years ago and they chose their side. His. Never mine.
“He’s so accomplished and successful, Louisa. You should listen to him,” my mother has said on so many occasions.
“He has his own coffee table book,” my father would follow up with.
“I’m on countless magazine covers,” I would argue, only for my mother to scoff.
“Dressed up like a Jezabelle,” she’d say.
There is no winning with her. Why try?
That’s the root of the problem, I think. I’ve always tried for others’ approval and opinions. Never my own. Too often, I don’t know what my own opinion is. I’ve been too malleable to others’.
This is what you like to wear. This is what you enjoy eating. These are the issues you believe in.
It’s refreshing to sit here on a dirty hardware store floor and take my time doing something for me without anyone else’s input.
It’s about damn time.
I ring the bell and hear Sam holler that he’s on his way.
While he mixes up the five colors, I wander the store, gathering the supplies I need.
On an endcap near the front is a selection of birdfeeders made out of teacups and saucers.
A sign says they’re made locally. After I drop the paintbrushes, trays, and drop cloth on the checkout counter, I return to pick one out.
It’s robin’s egg blue with delicate pink flowers. It may not be the most practical thing, but it brings me joy, and that’s all that matters.
Sam carries all five gallons of paint with him down the aisle. He’s grizzled with a head full of white-gray hair. I picture him sitting in an Adirondack chair in his backyard every night with a good ole American beer in his hand.
That thought brings me joy, too. My imagination isn’t usually this active…must be the effects of a good crash out.
“All set, Sam,” another voice says from the front door. Another man around Sam’s age pokes his head in the front door.
“How much do I owe you, Tommy?”
“Eh, it’s on the house. I had one sitting in the lot,” the new man says.
“Thanks, Tommy,” Sam tells him before he starts ringing me up. “Tommy owns the local wrecking yard.”
“That’s good to know,” I say, wondering why he’s telling me that.
“If you have any trouble with that new headlight, you let Tommy know.”
“What new headlight?”
“The one he just installed,” Sam says.
“What?” I look out the window to see the headlight that had been cracked is now not. “How?”
“Small town,” he says with a shrug. “Besides, you were back there damn near all day.”
“It was an hour,” I argue, rolling my eyes playfully.
“Same thing.” He gives me the total, and I pay him with cash. “Let me get you loaded up.”
“I can manage.”
“I have eyes, you know? They may not work as good as they used to, but I can still see,” he says, wiggling his fingers at my busted up hand. “Besides, I don’t need Grady stomping in here because you injured yourself more.”
“Yeah, okay,” I relent and lead him out to the car, where he drops the paint in the trunk. “If a girl wanted to get some lunch before she starts the horrible task of paint preparation, where would be the best spot?”
“Miss B’s, no question,” he says. “Head down Orchard to Sixth and take a right, you’ll see it.”
“Thanks, Sam. I appreciate it.”
“No problem, at all,” he says.
“You wouldn’t happen to know if Tommy likes oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, would you?”
“Tommy likes everything.”
“Good to know.”
“You take care of yourself.”
“I will,” I say before I drive off in search of Miss B’s.
It’s a small café at the end of a small strip building that also houses an even smaller hair salon and a dry cleaner.
Miss B’s is painted in an almost garish shade of neon green, except all the pots of flowers around the exterior offset its brightness in the most complementary way.
Inside is equally colorful, and I’m greeted with a happy smile drawn on the face of a woman around my age, her belly swollen with pregnancy.
“Hey, hon. You can sit anywhere you want; I’ll bring you some water and a menu.”
I thank her and take a table in the brightest light of the front windows. It’s early still, barely eleven. If there’s typically a lunch rush on a Wednesday, it isn’t here, yet. The only other table with anyone at it is on the other side of the café where two women chat animatedly.
The server comes by, as promised, dropping a glass of ice water that’s already sweating, and a single page paper menu. It lists today’s lunch specials as a tuna melt, a French dip, or a club sandwich, all with the option of fries or pasta salad.
There’s not a green salad in sight. The familiar panic tries to seep into my chest. I have to work at keeping it at bay.
You can eat what you want now, Louisa.
I weighed myself this morning and was appalled at how much weight I’ve lost. There was a time that I was obsessed with it. Pierre told me I had gained too much. While I don’t know if my relationship with food is at the level of an eating disorder, it certainly isn’t healthy.
“You’re disgusting, Louisa. Who would hire you in this state? You’d make them vomit.” All his ugly words were delivered in a beautiful French accent; it almost made them sound like compliments instead of insults.
It wasn’t true, then. I wasn’t too thin. But it may be, now. I am skin and bones. A skeleton. A soul inside a husk, absent of all substance.
“I’ll have the club, please. Could I get it with fries and also a small side of the pasta salad?”
“Absolutely, hon. Would you like something more than water?”
“Iced tea, if you have it.”
“We sure do,” she says. “Should be out quickly.”
“Thank you.”
While I wait, I pull up a social media site. I haven’t logged into any of my accounts. One of the police officers told me I shouldn’t, since so many of them share my general location. So, I created fake accounts. Anonymous ones that don’t follow anyone, don’t post anything, and have no friends.
I had to see. To know what he’s up to. If he’s looking.
His last four posts have been with a woman. Thalia Blue, another model. Up-and-comer. Young. Impressionable and ambitious.
I recognize her hunger because it mirrors mine from when I first started in the business.
I can’t warn her. Not without potential exposure.
When the iced tea is placed in front of me, I’m surprised that I’m biting my nail and tapping my foot incessantly. My mind races for a solution. I can’t just leave her victim to his narcissistic ways.
I start to text Juliet but stop myself mid-sentence. If she messages Thalia and Thalia tells Pierre, he’ll do what he can to ruin her career, too. And it puts me in Juliet’s proximity.
Instead, I email the police officer that made the initial arrest and ask if there’s been any advancement on my case, on his end. It’s in the court’s hands, now, but Officer Brandt was brutally honest when he told me it likely would go no farther than maybe a fine and time served.
Years of abuse for me. Two nights for him.
I copy the same email and send it to the prosecutor who was assigned to my case but I haven’t heard a peep from.
When I look at Thalia’s account, I don’t see any posts from her that include Pierre.
In fact, there is a picture of her and another man with whom she looks close to.
Switching back to Pierre’s account, I examine each of the three photos.
He posted them on different days; she’s in different outfits in each one.
But they look like they could have all been taken in the same studio, the lighting is the same in each, even if the background is slightly different.
It’s bait. Either he’s trying to lure me out or I’m a paranoid bitch.
Fuck, it could be both, at this point. After four years with him, I think I know him better than most. At least, when I let myself see clearly.
This fits him. It tracks with his personality, his manipulative ways.
Pierre lives to make me jealous. To get a reaction out of me.
The more I ignored him and his antics, the harder he’d try.
My life is spent in fear of him knowing me too well, but what if it’s me who knows him too well? Do I have the upper hand here? It doesn’t seem likely, but maybe that’s only because I have no confidence left.
The meal comes out and I try to ignore the building tension inside me about Pierre. For now, I need to focus on my well-being. Starting with learning to eat like a normal person. I’ve spent my entire career not enjoying food. More than that, I’ve been fearful of it.
If it kills me, I’m going to eat this sandwich and fries and like it. I’ve earned that, surely.